Senate Agriculture Committee to follow Banking panel in crypto vote next week: report

The Senate Agriculture Committee intends to hold a markup hearing and vote next Thursday to advance crypto market structure legislation, joining its Banking counterpart, Punchbowl News reported Wednesday.

The Agriculture Committee has not yet formally announced the hearing — and neither has the Banking Committee, for that matter — though Senator Tim Scott, who chairs the banking panel, said in press remarks on Tuesday that he was targeting Jan. 15, 2026 for a hearing.

Both committees have previously released discussion draft bills addressing how the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission will oversee crypto regulation in the U.S. The Agriculture Committee oversees the CFTC, while the SEC is under the Banking Committee's jurisdiction, meaning both committees will need to advance the same bill before the overall Senate can vote on the legislation.

Neither committee has released updated text ahead of next week's hearing. Lawmakers on the Banking Committee met Tuesday to discuss the bill, and a document released afterward outlined a number of asks from Democrats working on the legislation, with notes detailing whether they had been accepted.

Other notes detailed outstanding issues. Prominent among these are ethics concerns — Democrats have raised an alarm over U.S. President Donald Trump's family and its ties to various crypto businesses, even threatening the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act last year over these ties. The White House has so far rejected any effort to impose guardrails on Trump or his family, according to Senator Cynthia Lummis, one of the lead Republicans working on the bill.

Under the Senate's procedures, the committees are supposed to post their legislative language by Friday for the Thursday markup, but insiders are doubtful that the new drafts will be ready in time, necessitating the use of old language as a stand-in. Meanwhile, Senate staffs will be working furiously to churn out the update, whether it has a stamp of approval from Democrats or not.

The deadline next week was imposed by Scott, the chairman of the banking panel, though is not tied to any specific constraint in the Senate calendar other than a general political pressure to move urgently on crypto. But lobbyists are quietly wondering whether alienating Democrats is the right move toward getting the bipartisan bill they hoped for.

In previous months, the main players in this process had been lawmakers from both parties, White House officials, federal regulators and crypto insiders. But the increased noise from the traditional financial sector — banking and securities — has inserted itself into the negotiation on several points, including stablecoin yield and how to protect software developers. Democrats who are historically at odds with tradfi lobbyists have in some cases been moved by their arguments about threats to the existing financial system from the digital assets sector.